Education is the focus of the Quesnel School District on vaping right now.
Gloria Jackson is the Chair of Quesnel’s Board of Education…
“We certainly are putting some awareness out there about the vaping concerns. It’s been on our Facebook page, schools are doing quite a bit of work inside the schools around vaping and their concerns. And we’re educating not just the students but also the parents as well and letting them know that there are some serious health concerns connected with vaping.”
Jackson says the School District treats vaping like smoking in that students are not permitted to do it on school grounds or on buses.
Jackson says this is obviously not just a Quesnel issue…
“Just statistically from what I’ve read they’re seeing a very large increase, a large percent of youth that are doing vaping and that’s again a Canadian issue, those are just statistics I’ve read across the country but certainly it is a concern. The BC School Trustees Association has actually done a paper on vaping as well and want to see this become a federal issue.”
Some of the things that other Districts are doing include calling for more regulation to target vaping and working with municipal governments to develop bylaws to prevent advertising and targeting sales to minors.